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Gillian Duffy v Gordon Brown

On a visit to Rochdale then PM Gordon Brown met pensioner Gillian Duffy.

Taking her chance to quiz Mr Brown, Mrs Duffy asked him about immigration.

During their exchange in the street, Mrs Duffy told the Prime Minister: "You can't say anything about immigrants".

She added: "All these eastern Europeans - where are they coming from?"

Mr Brown politely answered Mrs Duffy's questions - until he got back to his car where he let rip to aides about her.

Still wearing a microphone he told an aide: "That was a disaster - they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's just ridiculous."

Asked what she had said, he replied: "Everything, she was just a bigoted woman."

The fallout would haunt Mr Brown until the end of the campaign.

Gillian Duffy (feat: Jeremy Vine) v Gordon Brown, round 2

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Gordon Brown's car crash wasn't over yet.

After fleeing the scene he arrived at a BBC studio, where his remarks were played back to him.

The image of his head in hands would come to define Brown's failed 2010 campaign.

He later returned to Mrs Duffy's house to apologise.

He said: "I am mortified by what has happened. I have given her my sincere apologies. I misunderstood what she said. She has accepted that there was a misunderstanding and she has accepted my apology.

Eddie Mair v Dawn Butler

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When Diane Abbott went on LBC this morning it had been almost twelve whole days since a Labour politician had been embarrassed on the airwaves.

Barely over a week ago Labour's Dawn Butler told Radio 4 interviewer Eddie Mair that the general election was "Theresa May trying to rig democracy in our country".

Then she accused coffee chain Costa of not paying it's tax, instead of one of it's high street competitors. She later apologised.

Diana Gould v Margaret Thatcher

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In the first car crash election interview of its kind Margaret Thatcher was floored by a member of the public who asked her about the sinking of the Belgrano.

Appearing on Nationwide during the 1983 election campaign Mrs Thatcher was grilled by a voter, Diana Gould, on the sinking of the Argentine warship the General Belgrano during the previous year's Falklands war.

It was the first time a PM was embarrassed on the airwaves, and it wouldn't be the last.